ABSTRACT
I’ve got to tell you, I had never been more proud than when I held a printed copy of the —rst feasibility study I had ever worked on in my hands. And it was heavy. Words I wrote were scattered throughout the main report and the entire economics appendix was all my work. It was jam packed with facts. I had poured my heart and soul into it. Here is something I have learned since that day: facts are not the best way to get your point across. They do not win people over or persuade them. An emotionally based story can have a greater impact than a traditional argument or a bunch of facts (Ruger 2010). Report writing needs to give way to storytelling. Causative stories are what you want to write: “This caused that and we did this because…”
Why did you do what you did in the study? Why’s motivate much more than who’s, what’s, when’s, and where’s (although they can be important too). Why’s go to motives, feelings, and emotions. Why did you reject the exercise trail, why did you include so many duck boxes, why did you decide what you did?
